Blacksite

[Sines]

So, I've heard things about massive waves of re-inforcements if you take too long in this mission. Throw in 'unknown' for enemy count, and that I can only bring 8 troops max (or 6 if I want to not take forever) and I'm really not sure what to expect here. The amount of time it takes to infiltrate makes this a pretty heavy investment. I just want to know what I should be preparing for.

[trihero]

Imo the blacksite feels like an easier HQ but with a hidden timer. It does have a lot of enemies but there's no "advent general 8 man pod" (I think there is guaranteed to be a sectopod though you don't always bump into it if you sneak on the sides). You should try to bring all the men you can because you will run into some stiff pods (like multi mutons, berserker). You should try to sneak along the side as much as you can and just maintain a focused but relaxed pace. The hidden timer is something like 20'ish turns depending in difficulties; they just drop an 8 man pod on you every turn until you break. I would try not to rely on the "sniper on the rooftop" style of overwatch creeping since you want to keep moving.

There's also a "regular" timer reminiscent of vanilla which is where you pick up the vial, reinforcements will start coming in (they don't start at 8 man strength, but they ramp up over time).

The Forge mission feels about the same as the above.

The Gate mission is a monstrosity (no hidden timers here, I think since you have to kill everything). It is chock full of 8 man pods and chrysallids left and right and annoying bullet sponges, so take your A team there and overwatch creep it hard.

[Sines]

I'm more of a "Reload all guns and let all cooldowns recharge, then overwatch for a few turns in case anything heard me earlier" kind of game for HQs myself, not so much the Snipers and Shinobi tactic.

Ah well then, it's "Take your time but hurry it up" then. I can manage that.

[aimlessgun]

In mine, and in the videos I've seen, the evac is fairly close to a backdoor to the main building near the objective. Sneaking all the way to this backdoor and doing a smash and grab is maybe the best way to approach it. Kill or disable the 2-3 pods you activate while your fastest guy grabs the vial, then run for the evac (or kill stuff for fun if you think you have it under control )

On legend I believe you have 10 turns until 8 man reinforcement spam, so fighting all the way from the start would be pretty tight (also I spawned the Archon King in my Blacksite so that strategy was right out).

[Sines]

On legend I believe you have 10 turns until 8 man reinforcement spam, so fighting all the way from the start would be pretty tight (also I spawned the Archon King in my Blacksite so that strategy was right out).

10 turns?! That's less time than you have to destroy a relay! If it uses the same map as Vanilla, the Blacksite isn't super long, but I don't recall it being so short that you could reasonably fight past all the enemies in a mere 10 turns. I'm not playing on Legendary, but if it's like most timed missions, than that just means I have 12 turns before I get massive enemy drops on me.

The other guy says it's more like 20 turns, which seems a bit more reasonable to me. Maybe he's on Veteran like myself. Either that, or you're low-balling the estimate for legendary. I've heard people talk about sneaking the mission, and if you only have 10 turns to do it from breaking concealment, I'd agree that that vastly encourages doing the mission stealthily.

[nightwyrm]

On legend I believe you have 10 turns until 8 man reinforcement spam, so fighting all the way from the start would be pretty tight (also I spawned the Archon King in my Blacksite so that strategy was right out).

10 turns?! That's less time than you have to destroy a relay! If it uses the same map as Vanilla, the Blacksite isn't super long, but I don't recall it being so short that you could reasonably fight past all the enemies in a mere 10 turns. I'm not playing on Legendary, but if it's like most timed missions, than that just means I have 12 turns before I get massive enemy drops on me.

The other guy says it's more like 20 turns, which seems a bit more reasonable to me. Maybe he's on Veteran like myself. Either that, or you're low-balling the estimate for legendary. I've heard people talk about sneaking the mission, and if you only have 10 turns to do it from breaking concealment, I'd agree that that vastly encourages doing the mission stealthily.

The Blacksite isn't timed so you can take as much time to sneak as you want. Once you blow concealment, you have 10 turns till 8-men reinforcements arrive. If you manage to sneak to the back of the map where the vial is located, you should have plenty of time to smash and grab. Trying to fight across the map is gonna be bad times though.

[Hazelnut]

Send in a shinobi wearing stealth armour. Creep as close to the vial in concealment. Move in, grab vial, activate the world. USe the phase through solid objects and zip outside the wall towards cover in the general evac direction. Watch advent spend most of their turn running around the walls, and avoid the odd low % shot from heavy cover. Briefly panic that the ladder you need to climb is blocked before realising you have a grapple. Rappel up, run, evac with middle finger raised...

[Sines]

The Blacksite isn't timed so you can take as much time to sneak as you want. Once you blow concealment, you have 10 turns till 8-men reinforcements arrive. If you manage to sneak to the back of the map where the vial is located, you should have plenty of time to smash and grab. Trying to fight across the map is gonna be bad times though.

I'm wondering if that's going to be changed. If you really do only have 10 turns after blowing concealment, then it sounds like this map HEAVILY encourages stealth tactics. And I don't get the idea that Pavonis intended to make major story missions into stealth missions.

[trihero]

It's 20 turns from the moment you start. It takes 8 turns after you pop the objective to get doom reinforcements. These numbers are from legendary, proof provided in the code below, whoever said 10 is just flapping their mouth. The number for [1] would be for veteran, [3] is for legend.

; This is the turn count after squad reveal AND strategic objective fulfillment on missions with unlimited ("continuous") reinfs when ADVENT starts dropping 8-strong pods to force the player to skedaddle.
; Disabled by -1 or a positive reinforcement cap.
+TURN_COUNT_FOR_CAVALRY_AFTER_VICTORY[0]=-1
+TURN_COUNT_FOR_CAVALRY_AFTER_VICTORY[1]=12
+TURN_COUNT_FOR_CAVALRY_AFTER_VICTORY[2]=10
+TURN_COUNT_FOR_CAVALRY_AFTER_VICTORY[3]=8

; This is the turn count after squad reveal on missions with unlimited ("continuous") reinfs when ADVENT starts dropping 8-strong pods to force the player to skedaddle.
+TURN_COUNT_TO_CAVALRY_ALL_CASES[0]=-1
+TURN_COUNT_TO_CAVALRY_ALL_CASES[1]=28
+TURN_COUNT_TO_CAVALRY_ALL_CASES[2]=24
+TURN_COUNT_TO_CAVALRY_ALL_CASES[3]=20

[Sines]

It's 20 turns from the moment you start. It takes 8 turns after you pop the objective to get doom reinforcements. These numbers are from legendary, proof provided in the code below, whoever said 10 is just flapping their mouth.

Thanks. I thought about looking for this stuff in the .ini files, but I wasn't sure where to begin looking.

So it seems that on Veteran, I have a 28 turn timer that starts ticking down upon breaking concealment. There's also a shorter timer to trigger the 'cavalry' if you manage to grab the objective early. I suspect this second timer exists solely for the player who stealths the mission, solo-grabs the objective, re-conceals and tries to wait for a perfect alignment of enemies to allow him to waltz right out. Otherwise, I see no reason why, even on legendary, you can't escape within 8 turns of grabbing the objective.

Thanks for the info. Timers aside, how many enemies (and in what pod sizes) are we talking about here? Party size goes up to 8, but infiltration is a long affair. Also, a smaller party is more likely to sneak deeper into enemy territory without activating, thus allowing them more time to fight what enemies they do fight. I've been going into HQs with a party of merely size 8 and been fine. Might a 6-person party (assuming my best troops) do well here?

[trihero]

Warning: I haven't personally tried a small man stealth team for the blacksite/forge, but I suspect it might be doable. The issue is that there's a fairly big pod of 6-8 patroling inside the facility close to the vial. I haven't tried to sneak around it before. They are not literally humping the vial, so it may be possible to slip right by them with a ghostwalker/covert shinobi, then have the rest of your team on the outside near the evac and support him with aid protocol (which doesn't require line of sight!)/smokes once he reveals himself by grabbing the vial.

I think 6 should be fine. If you get caught you should be able to fight your way out of anything with your best troops.

You might want to bring a shape charge (10 supplies, no tech requirement) to blow out the back wall of the vial to make it easier for your shinobi to escape (he should be able to sneak in with ghostwalker just fine, but getting out you might want to hurry), but be warned that thing is ridiculously loud so run like hell once you blow it.

[Sines]

I have no particular interest in attempting this stealthily. Honestly, the concept kind of bothers me. It's one thing to solo or duo some random hacking mission, but a story mission (which I hear has high odds of including the first Sectopod) really shouldn't be skipped over like that

That being said, if I can manage a repeat of my second Network Tower, wherein I brought a rifle-grenadier, a gunner and a SPARK into the Command Center under concealment, I'm not going to complain

[Dwarfling]

This is what I did on Commander:

Composition:
- Shinobi officer: this guy's role is to use Command on your runner while remaining concealed.
- Runner: this guy will grab the vial and run back outside on the same turn. Probably best to be a Shinobi.
- Grenadier: preferably a support grenadier. Will use frost grenade (or flashbang) on the pod that sits on the vial.
- Filler: this guy (or guys if you feel like bringing more) will sit outside the door close to the evac and provide help. Bring a smoke. Possibly Aid protocol.

The plan:

Sneak all the way behind the facility along the sides, bringing SMGs for mobility and light on equipment. Get to the door closest to the vial and set your runner next to the door. The grenadier can wait outside near a window or around the door, just make sure you can hit the vial. Once you get all your actions, open the door, frost/flash the vial, command on your runner, run in, cutscene, grab the vial, gtfo, brace for impact as you possibly activate the pod that patrols the human goo pools. Remember that the pool pod usually has a stun lancer so your officer and grenadier must be accordingly placed. Next turn you should be able to escape with everyone.

[Alketi]

It's 20 turns from the moment you start

; This is the turn count after squad reveal on missions with unlimited ("continuous") reinfs when ADVENT starts dropping 8-strong pods to force the player to skedaddle.
+TURN_COUNT_TO_CAVALRY_ALL_CASES[0]=-1
+TURN_COUNT_TO_CAVALRY_ALL_CASES[1]=28
+TURN_COUNT_TO_CAVALRY_ALL_CASES[2]=24
+TURN_COUNT_TO_CAVALRY_ALL_CASES[3]=20

The code comment indicates the turn timers are after squad reveal. I haven't done a Blacksite yet, don't you begin concealed?

[trihero]

Ok you got me, I should have said "start fighting."

[aimlessgun]

Interesting. I said 10 turns because that's how it went down in my first blacksite attempt. Went loud at start, got on a roof, overwatch camped, and counted turns. ~10 turns later pod of 8 teleports behind me. Maybe it was 9 turns or 11 turns but it sure as hell wasn't 20. I also recall a new reinforcement warning appearing when it came back to my turn as well, but maybe this wasn't the 'continuous reinforcements' like I assumed.

[trihero]

Well to be perfectly honest, I don't know if there could be other factors involved like dark events (rapid reinforcements). All I have to go off is that one variable in the ini file, I'm not looking at the actual function that handles the variables.

[trihero]

Well, I just did blacksite and forge with 2 shinobis. I think that is the best way to go, considering you don't collect corpses, you can repeat the mission if you goof up, and the infiltration time is obviously way lower than taking 6-8 men. You run essentially zero risk of the "doom reinforcements" this way as well since you're concealed until the very end.

Obvious protip is obvious: don't do this if the Dark Event: Vigilance is up. And you might as well go to 200% infiltration for the evac bonus as well as the 1/6 reduction of detection radius.

You also don't need shape charges. In fact I think it makes it a little harder because whoever throws the shape charge gets revealed and it has terrible range, and it also lets enemies chase you through the hole in the wall faster.

One shinobi is an officer with command/mic, the other one has a lot of movespeed. Spider suits are optional and nice, but you don't need the grappling aspect I just use it for the +1 movement. You may wish to put a mind shield and/or medikit on your non-officer since he is the one who will break concealment and possibly get poisoned/mind controlled (although if you are careful, neither of these events should even happen to begin with). I didn't even need to use the perk Conceal.

Blacksite: run along either the left or right side, your nonofficer goes up to one of the side doors, then pops ghostwalker and walks onto one of the green squares next to the objective. There is a pod humping this room, but there should be enough room for you to stand on one of the tiles (with ghostwalker/covert to reduce their vision to 1) without getting seen. Taking the vial actually uses 0 actions, so then next turn you pick up the vial, run out the side to a spot where line of sight is blocked by the walls and the mobs should not be able to hit you, then the turn after you run to the evac zone ez pez (commander shinobi is just hanging out on the cliff somewhere to provide command/oscar mike for safety).

Forge: same idea, again opening the container and picking up the body actually uses...0 actions so when you're ready you can grab it and run like hell. Just watch for drones/sectoid commander patrols on the sides near the clean room and be patient so they don't have vision of where you will run to the cliffs. Since you get to place the evac flare in this mission, you may wish to do so with your officer shinobi way in the back beforehand and let it finish before your other shinobi grabs the body.

Obviously, the Gate mission has a sweep condition and 40+ enemies so this is where you truly take your "A" team, other than that I don't think you need to on blacksite/forge. I even saw a brief moment in joinrbs L/I run in the forge where he said he just should have stealthed the mission. So in reality, there's only one "golden path" mission where you need to bring an "A" team (gate), and then of course the final mission.

[Sines]

On a similar note, what are the Facilities like? I'm going to need to take a few of those down, and I'm curious as to what I'm in for.

[trihero]

They're like the vanilla facilities, except with a lot more enemies o.O

I'm going to try to stealth shinobi one and see how it goes, I just brute forced it on previous runs.

[trihero]

Ok, so facilities have around 30'ish enemies ( can vary based on regional strength), mine was 28 at 200% infiltration. They have the same general layout/feel of the vanilla facility.

There is a reinforcement countdown once you blow concealment, so I highly suggest you try a double shinobi team. I took a technical as a third in order to have someone to toss the evac flare as well as possibly use the rocket to break down walls (the facility walls are very tough though and the regular rocket doesn't seem to penetrate it reliably although it can break a hole in the windows for shinobis to jump out of).

Planting X4 costs no action points, so to me the best approach was sneak around, find a spot for your technical to set up the evac flare, get a shinobi within a blue move of the X4, then in the same turn make sure no one is in sight of the vial, blue move take vial + conceal + ghostwalker + rocket a wall + start retreating, people will start coming but your shinobis will be stealthed and your technical should be out of range of anyone. Your commander shinobi (probably the one that didn't take the vial) is in range of the others to provide Command or Oscar Mike/Fall Back as needed. Ez mission.

I imagine it's considerably more annoying if you try to fight your way through it on higher difficulties due to RNFs, especially given there's an alien 8 pod near the vial.

edit: a helpful thing I find is if you bring a specialist with Trojan. If you cast haywire's stun move from concealment, it doesn't break stealth, and yet when the stun effect ends they take Trojan damage which still doesn't reveal you. Thus, you can slowly kill all the annoying drones/turrets close to the objective and thus clear a nice evac zone your shinobi can move to in one turn from the C4.

Probably ideal minimum team is shinobi + specialist. Bring a second shinobi for officer abilities if you're feeling paranoid. Probably don't need technical.